Matching your style to the buyer for building a relationship
Buyer personality
If you in Sales would be able to identify or recognize the style or personality of your buyer then you stand a much better chance of communicating with and building a stronger relationship with him or her says Andy Miller.
The better you match your style with the one from your buyer, the higher the likelihood to close a sale.
He defines and describes the styles as DISC: the Dominants, the Influencers, The Steady Relaters and the Cautious Thinkers in his blog post to which you should adapt to.
Probably, you can define a few more typical styles, personalities and types amongst your buyers or people involved in the purchase process: The Delegators, The Knowledge Cravers, The Nay-Sayers,…
Styles and personalities in purchase process
There are 4 issues with identification of styles:
- Nobody falls 100% in a category.
Have you ever know someone fitting completely into one category?
Most people are a bit of two or more styles.
- In different situations people do react differently.
Depending on:
. the importance of the decision
. the involvement of upper management
in a purchase process, people will react differently.
- People with the same style in a different role need to be addressed differently.
A certain style person can be an influencer, an advocate, or a decision taker.
Although the same style, they should be addressed accordingly and thus differently.
- Smaller companies versus large corporations.
In smaller companies the decision and reporting lines are short, in large corporation both are long.
People with similar styles will act and think differently than in large corporations with many decision levels.
How to act to build a relationship?
Thus even if you have nailed down the style of each of the persons involved in the purchase process, the challenge remains how to act, communicate and interact with him or her in order to build a relationship.
There is no universal or golden rule.
That is where sales ability and experience probably become important.
What is your experience with different styles and personality of people in different environments or organisations?
